


A Kingdom for a Necklace

by Fallynleaf



Series: the Bobby John AU [8]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dean Doing Feminine Things, Gen, Pretty Pretty Princess, Samulet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-21
Updated: 2015-06-21
Packaged: 2018-04-05 10:30:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4176480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fallynleaf/pseuds/Fallynleaf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bobby John finds something that dredges up old memories for Sam and Dean.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Kingdom for a Necklace

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Prettiest Princess](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2453456) by [Fallynleaf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fallynleaf/pseuds/Fallynleaf). 



> This fic won't make much sense unless you've read [The Prettiest Princess](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2453456), a genfic I wrote some months ago that takes place pre-series in the normal show canon. I wasn't necessarily planning on making that fic canon in the Bobby John AU, but then I couldn't resist.
> 
> I kind of think of this fic as a distant sequel to The Prettiest Princess. It deals with a lot of the same themes, but it ends on a much more positive note, which is pretty much how I'd describe the Bobby John AU as a whole, honestly.
> 
> This fic takes place when Bobby John is five years old.

It happened at a thrift store. Having a kid that regularly changed several clothing sizes, sometimes in the course of a single day or week, meant that Sam and Dean spent a lot of time in thrift stores. Of course, Bobby John had quickly discovered that thrift stores were good for more than just clothes.

"Can we get this?" Bobby John asked, pulling a box off of the shelf. It gave a satisfying rattle with the movement.

"Hmm?" Dean said, glancing down at the kid. They were in the section of the store that contained board games, and Bobby John hadn't really shown much interest in those before. Probably because Sam and Dean didn't know how to play most of the classics since they had never owned them when they were growing up.

Bobby John held up the box for him to read. And Dean stopped walking.

"No way," Dean breathed. "Sam‒"

Sam turned around. He followed Dean's spellbound gaze to the box, and then his eyes widened in recognition. "Is that‒" he started.

"Yeah," Dean said. "Looks like a new edition, but... yeah."

"Go ahead and put that in the basket, Bobby John," Sam said quietly.

The kid smiled wide. He maneuvered the box into the basket between the handles, then started to rummage through a bin of toys on the floor beside the shelf. Dean and Sam just stared at the basket where the box sat, pink and green and white, the title of the game adorned with flowers and a butterfly. _Pretty Pretty Princess_ , it said.

Bobby John wanted to play with it as soon as they got back to the motel. He opened the box and dumped all of the contents out onto the carpet, picking up the plastic jewelry and scrutinizing the different pieces. "The instructions are missing," he said, disappointed.

"That's okay. Your Dads know how to play it," Sam said.

Dean sat down. He picked up the four pieces of the board and laid them out in the proper order. The cardboard fit together crisply, which betrayed that the game's previous owners had made little use of it. Cardboard tended to get bent and torn with use, after all.

"What color do you want?" Dean asked Bobby John. "You get to pick just one."

Bobby John considered his options. "Pink," he said. Dean wasn't surprised. Red was the kid's favorite color, but pink was a close second.

Sam fished out the playing pieces from among the scattered jewelry, then he and Dean scooped up the jewelry in handfuls and dumped it into the center of the container. Sam handed Dean the blue playing piece and kept the purple one for himself.

There weren't a lot of rules, and it didn't take long for Sam to explain them all to Bobby John. Getting the spinner to work properly took some amount of finger dexterity that Bobby John didn't quite have yet, but after enough tries, he figured out how to flick the arrow firmly enough to get it sufficiently spinning.

"Never played Pretty Pretty Princess with more than two people before," Dean said. Something in his throat felt a little rough.

"You're going to lose," Bobby John said.

"Doesn't matter when there's nothing at stake," Dean said. "So we should figure that out before we start: What will the prettiest princess win?"

"A hug," Bobby John said immediately. He paused to consider it a little more. "And also ice cream."

Dean nodded his approval. "Alright," he said, accepting the terms. "Let's do this."

Wearing that plastic jewelry again felt a little surreal. It still looked just as silly as it always had, but Dean still couldn't quite manage to shake the fear that John was going to arrive at any minute, that every turn in the game was just taking another spin on a roulette wheel that would inevitably result in punishment. Dean's heartbeat still quickened whenever a car pulled into the parking lot outside.

But Bobby John spent the entire time laughing. He giggled when Sam slid both the purple ring and the black one onto his pinky finger. He cackled gleefully when Dean gloated over winning the crown only to lose it the very next turn.

And Bobby John wore a proud smirk when he triumphantly clipped on the second earring and stood up to declare, "I win!"

Dean looked at him and couldn't suppress a smile, though he pretended to look disappointed. "Best two out of three?" he said.

Sam rolled his eyes, but he was smiling, too. He exchanged a look with Dean that communicated happiness or regret or maybe something in between.

The second game went to Sam, but Bobby John reclaimed the title of _prettiest princess_ in the third, and then he demanded that Sam and Dean make good on their agreed upon conditions.

So Sam leaned over and pulled Bobby John into a hug, and afterwards, Bobby John looked over expectantly at Dean, still bedecked in jewelry.

"The condition was _a_ hug," Dean said.

Bobby John's face fell. Dean winced. He'd intended his remark to be funny and not mean. So he just reached over and wrapped his arms around both Bobby John and Sam. Bobby John squealed happily between the two of them.

"Okay," Dean said. "Let's, uh, put away the game so that we can go get ice cream."

They picked an ice cream parlor downtown. There were a couple of options, but Bobby John wanted to go to the one that had an awful, hideous gigantic teddy bear seated on the bench outside of it.

As they waited in line, Sam turned towards Bobby John and asked, "So, the prettiest princess gets ice cream, but what about the rest of us? Do we just get to stand here and watch you eat it?"

Bobby John looked contemplative.

Dean glared at Sam. "Now you got him considering it," he said. Downtown only stretched a couple blocks, but walking them in the afternoon sunlight had got Dean kind of looking forward to ice cream.

"You can have some, too. I'll pay for it," Bobby John said, with all of the grace of a benevolent ruler agreeing to dip into the royal coffers as a display of kindness and goodwill.

Sam and Dean looked at each other. _You gave him money?_ They asked with a glance.

Then Bobby John walked up to the counter and pointed at the rainbow sherbet. Dean and Sam made rushed decisions about what kind of ice cream they wanted, and as soon as they were done, they found Bobby John waiting in front of the cashier.

"I'm paying for those two as well," Bobby John told the woman who stood in front of the cash register. Then he turned around and held out his hand towards Dean and Sam expectantly.

"Uh..." Dean said.

"That'll be $15.48," the woman said to Sam and Dean. She seemed to be struggling really hard to not appear too amused.

Sam handed Bobby John a twenty. Bobby John handed it to the woman. She opened the cash register and got out several ones, two quarters, and a couple pennies. Bobby John took the coins in one hand and the bills in the other. Then he stuffed both hands into his pockets and deposited the change there instead of returning it to Sam.

The kid was smooth, Dean thought, impressed.

They ended up sitting at a small table outside the store, beside the gigantic stuffed bear. Dean ate his ice cream so quickly, he couldn't even remember what flavor he had picked afterwards, but Bobby John devoured his smaller-portioned rainbow sherbet even faster. Dean stole the last couple bites of Sam's vanilla ice cream because if he didn't help eat it, the sun would've melted it anyways. At least, that's what he said when Sam glared at him and tried to fence with his spoon.

"So, what'd you think of Pretty Pretty Princess?" Dean asked Bobby John.

The kid shrugged. "It was fun," he said. "We should play it again." His face brightened with sudden excitement. "We can call Cas!"

"Four-person Pretty Pretty Princess," Dean said, a little incredulous. The very idea had been an unthinkable possibility for him and Sam, back then. But Pretty Pretty Princess was a different game for Bobby John.

All of the game pieces and the board sat back in their box on the floor in the center of the motel room, plain and obvious for all to see. In a day, or a week, or a couple weeks, maybe, Bobby John would probably be a little girl. And then it would just be Sam and Dean playing a girly dress up game with their five year-old daughter. Even John couldn't have a problem with that.

 

* * *

 

Sometime later, Bobby John was staying at Bobby's, and Sam and Dean were in a completely different state finishing up a hunt before they would head back to Sioux Falls for Christmas.

Dean came back to the motel room later than Sam that night. When he opened the door, he found Sam sitting on the floor, setting up Pretty Pretty Princess.

"It's been a long time, hasn't it?" Sam said softly.

"Yeah." Dean took a moment to count the numbers in his head. "Almost twenty four years," he said. "Since we first found it, at least."

"This is probably a really dumb thing to do," Sam said, running his hand through his hair.

Dean shrugged. "It's not like we were ever really the target demographic, anyways." He slowly sat down across from Sam. The blue and purple playing pieces were already on the board.

Sam pushed the spinner towards him. Dean flicked it, and both of them watched the little arrow hum as it spun over the numbers.

They played a quiet game. But it was a comfortable silence, this time. Not a fearful one.

A couple turns into the game, Dean reached into the container, but there was no more blue jewelry on top. "Hang on," he said, frowning. "Where's the blue necklace?" He started to sift through the pink jewelry, and then the green underneath it, and then his fingers exposed something that was not cheap plastic.

Dean paused, his hand hovering over it. Slowly, he grasped the thin cord and pulled it free from the multicolored jewelry.

It was neither plastic nor blue, but it was indeed a necklace.

And Dean would recognize _this_ necklace anywhere. The black cord with the bronze pendant, all of it still familiar in his hands, the amulet already warming from contact with his skin.

"Sam..." Dean whispered. "Where did you... How..."

"Cas found it," Sam said. "I asked him to. I don't know where it was, or how he got it. But it's here now."

Dean stared at it.

"Remember... " Sam said, not meeting Dean's eyes. "The first rule is that we have to wear every single piece of jewelry we get. No matter how stupid or girly we look."

Dean glanced up at the same time Sam did. His grasp on the amulet tightened.

Then he changed his grip on the cord and lifted it up, slipping it over his head. The weight of the pendant on his chest felt strange for just a few seconds before it became comfortable again. The corners of Dean's eyes felt damp, but he forced the feeling away before it developed into actual tears.

Sam's eyes were shining, too. "Dunno how long it's been since..." He gestured at the necklace around Dean's neck.

"God, the last time I wore it must've been around the time the kid was born," Dean said. "Has it really been five years?"

Sam nodded, but said nothing. He reached over and gave the spinner an absentminded flick, then moved his playing piece.

"Though I guess the amulet and this game have the same anniversary, for us," Dean said. He took his turn, and slid the blue bracelet onto his wrist.

"Yeah, that's why I got it back," Sam said. "Merry Christmas, jerk."

"You're still a couple days early, bitch," Dean said. "I'll have to take it off so that you can wrap it, and then I'll unwrap it in front of Bobby and the kid and pretend to be surprised."

"Don't take it off," Sam said quickly. "I'll just get you a second present."

"Make that three presents," Dean said, fishing the crown out from the center of the board. "Because I just won."

Sam glared at him. "Next time _I_ win, that'll be _no_ presents for you."

"Fine. But before you can do that, you need to come over here and give me a hug. It's the kid's contribution to our house rules, and I sure as hell ain't breaking it," Dean said, opening his arms.

Sam sighed, but there was no exasperation in it. "Stand up," he said.

Dean got to his feet. Sam stepped over to him, and then Sam's arms were folded around Dean in a full-on embrace, taking the hug rule about as far as it could reasonably be interpreted. Dean almost tried to push Sam away, but he found himself returning the embrace instead.

The bronze amulet pressed against Dean's chest from where it hung between them.


End file.
